Snap Election - United Kingdom

United Kingdom

In February 1974, Conservative prime minister Edward Heath called a snap election for 28 February despite the deadline for an election being more than a year away. He urged British voters to "return a strong government with a firm mandate", but the election produced a hung parliament. The Tory government had the larger share of the vote, but the Labour opposition led by Harold Wilson had marginally more seats. Four days later, having failed to form a coalition with the Liberals, Heath resigned as prime minister and paved the way for Labour to return as a minority government under Wilson. Another election was held on 10 October that year, and Labour won by a three-seat majority.

Read more about this topic:  Snap Election

Famous quotes containing the words united and/or kingdom:

    Ethnic life in the United States has become a sort of contest like baseball in which the blacks are always the Chicago Cubs.
    Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)

    In the whole vast dome of living nature there reigns an open violence, a kind of prescriptive fury which arms all the creatures to their common doom: as soon as you leave the inanimate kingdom you find the decree of violent death inscribed on the very frontiers of life.
    Joseph De Maistre (1753–1821)